Many final year students of the National Higher Teachers training College, ENS Yaoundé, are in for trouble. They have duly completed the writing of their end-of-course dissertations but are unable to defend them.

Reason: they did not meet the deadline for the deposit of the said dissertations and so the school officials have denied the students the right to defend them.

The deadline for the deposit of such dissertations for all the sections of the institution was June 17, 2014, Daybreak was reliably informed.

We were equally told that some of the students concern met with the deadline while many others did not for various reasons ranging from the delays of some dissertation supervisors to complete their work with their supervisees, to the latter’s lack of the wherewithal to print and bind their works.

However, most, if not all the students have since been through with writing and binding their works but unable to turn them in because they are considered to be late.

“When we complained,” a student of the institution who asks not to be named said, “the authorities of one or two sections extended the deadline to June 19.

Thereafter, and up to now, they have turned down every dissertation that has been taken to them.”

The speaker added that defenses were initially scheduled to begin on June 23, but the date was changed to July 1, giving the students reasons to hope that their work will finally be received.

“But when each of us went to hand them, we were chased away like intruding animals,” the speaker said, almost shedding tears.

At press time, students who had handed works were already defending each in their turn while those who have not, because they are being turned away for late coming are still writhing in frustration.

If their dissertations are finally not accepted, the students in question would wait for another year before they can defend and eventually graduate.

This is what the frustrated students do not want to hear, as gathered from what another of the students told Daybreak still on conditions of anonymity.

“I hope by refusing our dissertations, the school authorities do not mean that we should wait for another one year to defend. That would be unacceptable! The Minister of Higher Education should intervene in this matter.

I don’t know whether the said authorities are doing this with or without his consent.

Some of us have tried to meet him on few occasions, but have not been able to because in this country, to succeed to meet a ministers like succeeding to pass through the eye of a needle,” she lamented.